Physicians Practice - April 2008 - (Page 52)

TECHNOLOGY Also, don’t be surprised if you get an answer you weren’t expecting. Security isn’t the highest priority for many EMR vendors, says Chang. Consequently, only the newest EMR vendors are very tight with security and encrypting user-to-network connections. In fact, Chang estimates that only one or two out of the approximately 300 EMR products on the market today incorporate the very highest level of encryption services. For many practices, the best solution is to outsource security to people who understand networks and computers better than they do. That’s what Family Practice Associates of Lexington does. With 10 family physicians, two midlevel providers, and a family therapist on staff, the practice can’t afford to hire a full-time IT department for their needs — even if they do have more than 100 workstations! “There are some of the larger practices with multiple locations that have in-house IT staff, but most of us in the small- to medium-sized group setting . . . tend to contract out the more demanding parts,” says Miller. If you decide to use an outside company for your networking and security needs, Miller recommends locating a vendor speciﬁcally experienced with medical practices. “Not only from the standpoint of the extra security measures that need to go along with patient conﬁdentiality, but also so that they understand the medical environment,” Miller says. “The bottom line is that I can’t be down in the middle of the day for three hours while we’re trying to see patients. It’s just absolutely impossible.” 4. HAVE A BACKUP PLAN Most people don’t think about backing up their data as a security measure, but an important part of HIPAA’s security requirements is data protection and recovery. HIPAA regulations require that your practice have a plan for backing up patient information, storing backups, and retrieving data in the case of an emergency. It’s also a good idea for your practice to have such a plan in place so it can continue operating if something happens to the network. Family Practice Associates of Lexington has multiple redundancy measures in place when it comes to data protection. “We do have tape backups here on site. We back up on a nightly basis. We keep the tapes here in a ﬁreproof safe, plus we take a copy off-site on a daily basis so that we don’t ever have all of our data in one place,” explains Miller. “More important, our practice management and our EMR are backed up remotely to our software vendor. Our network is backed up to our networking vendor. So we are backed up three or four different ways.” And make sure that any data that leaves your practice is also protected. “One of the mistakes practices make is they make a backup tape, and they leave it off-site,” says Chang. “What if the tape was lost or stolen? I can grab that tape and stick it in any tape drive 52 | PHYSICIANS PRACTICE | APRIL 2008 WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM http://www.emdeon.com/simplify http://www.emdeon.com/simplify http://WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Physicians Practice - April 2008

Physicians Practice - April 2008 Contents The Bigger Picture: Medicare Decision Time Letters Physicians Practice Pearls: Outsource Your Pain Noteworthy Cover Story: Trial Lawyers Tell All Management: When It’s Time to Change Ask the Experts Technology: Do You Know Where Your Data Is? The Tech Doctor: Are Your Discarded PCs Really Clean? Billing & Collections: Playing Hardball The Administrator's Desk: Recruiting for Patient Satisfaction Start It Up: Finance - Mastering the Numbers Game Coding The Great Practice Makeover: Taking Care of Business Associates Classifieds Advertiser Index

Physicians Practice - April 2008

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